Our editors work with affiliates when we select some or all of the products featured. We will receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases through these links.
17 smart small front garden ideas for every budget
When it comes to gardening, we tend to put all our attention on the main part out back and ignore our front gardens. This shouldn’t be the case, especially as it's the very first impression visitors get of the house and provides the main note of greenery when it comes to city gardens. However much space you have, a small garden allows experimentation and can encourage you to innovate in ways you might not have expected, including – of course – thinking creatively about the most efficient use of space, and how plants and other garden features might interact with whatever sit in front of your house differently to what’s behind it. And if privacy matters, there is all manner of climbing plants, verdant greenery and topiary to screen the house from prying eyes – so pay attention and get planting.
"As Georgina Reid from Australia’s Planthunter magazine so beautifully put it, front gardens are our gift to the street. They have been the botanical backdrop to our daily walks, registering the slow but deeply reassuring passage of time through the seasons during difficult times,” writes Lottie Delamain in three schemes for small front gardens.
“Tending to your front garden is not just an aesthetic gift to you and your neighbours, it has a myriad of other benefits too. Planting for pollinators provides bees and other insects a much-needed source of food and shelter in urban environments. Less glamorous, but no less important, planting and porous hard-landscaping is extremely important for water management and to prevent flooding in cities, helping improve drainage in ever-more concrete jungles.”
Our garden editor Clare Foster advises “choosing tough, low maintenance plants that will give as much seasonal interest as possible.” Starting with a hedge structure, infill it with seasonal flowers, low-lying grasses and perhaps climbing plants for walls and fences, and you'll have a beautiful scheme that will look fresh and smart all year round.
Small front garden ideas
Britt Willoughby Dyer1/17There are many plants to train up the front of your house, but beware of those like Clematis montana and Virginia creeper that will quickly rampage up and over everything,' says garden editor Clare Foster in How to beautify the exterior of your house with plants. 'Climbing roses and wisteria are the classic countryh ouse choices. For urban spaces, Trachelospermum jasminoides (star jasmine) is one of the easiest climbers, happy in sun or semi-shade. Climbers are best trained using a wire and vineeye system. Screw the vine-eyes into the masonry to create a system of taut wires, either vertical or horizontal, and about 45cm apart. For smaller climbers such as clematis, screw a wooden trellis to the wall. Try Green Wall Systems or Stainless Steel Solutions for ready-made kits.
Paul Massey2/17Florist Paul Hawkins has created a comfortable country cottage in town at his Chelsea house, filling it with his signature sophisticated arrangements for the festive season. Whilst Paul did not have space for full front garden, he nevertheless has added the perfect amount of greenery by way of geranium plants and other shrubs.
Dean Hearne3/17Sculptor Fitzhugh Karol and designer Lyndsay Caleo outside their Long Island home, where hydrangeas are among the blooms spilling out from beds on either side of the path.
James McDonald4/17Designer James Mackie’s cottage, built of mellow local stone, sits on an attractive single-track road in a Cotswold village. Clipped round hedges and pots of geraniums make for a welcoming scene outside the door.
Eva Nemeth5/17If you have a bit more space at the front of the house, a series of beds divided by paths is a beautiful look. Our garden editor Clare Foster devised this scheme for her front garden in Berkshire. "The idea for the front was to have an unstructured, joyous cottage garden with a tumbling mix of bright flowers and soft grasses I could cut from. I wanted things to self-seed in the gravel, so that the garden would almost design itself and, three years on, this is happening just as I planned.
"Dianthus carthusianorum, Digitalis grandiflora, white centranthrus, ammi, nigella and hollyhocks are making themselves at home, weaving around larger plants within an evergreen framework of domed Teucrium fruticans and Hebe rakaiensis.
“With a loose and naturalistic garden like this, the crucial thing is to edit: to take out the surplus seedlings along with the weeds, leaving just the right balance of artfully arranged plants.”
Simon Upton6/17Evergreen indigenous shrubs, such as rosemary, lavender, teucrium and myrtle, set off the pale limestone walls in this glorious country house in the South of France by Lucy Hammond Giles
James McDonald7/17Foxgloves are a classic cottage garden flower, and here at the front of Tobias Vernon's Somerset cottage, where there is no garden to speak of, they create the sense of one by spilling out from the grass verge.
Christopher Horwood8/17Tasked with reinventing this cottage on the Bradford Estate by its owners, Viscount and Viscountess Newport, Emma Ainscough has created something magical – and the best bit? You can rent it out for holidays. The front garden's landscaping was done by Tig Cameron-Goodman; a central path leads from the sitting room doors to a swing between the trees at the end of the garden.
Sean Fennessey9/17In an extract from her book 'Spaces for Living', Australian interior designer Tamsin Johnson details the design she created for her sister's home. The front garden is small but adds the perfect amount of green with its built-in beds full of cacti.
Alex Lukey10/17With lacquered surfaces, large-scale mirrors and enticing hints of gold and silver, this Toronto house has been given a dramatic look by Colette van den Thillart that is both glamorous and easy to live with. The front garden is tidily landscaped, adding balance to the taupe- and iron ore-coloured façade.
Paul Massey11/17With a small section of lawn outside her Kent home, Katharine Howard edged it with ball boxes to define the pathway and keep it simple.
Paul Massey12/17The façade of tech entrepreneur Rose Hulse’s 18th-century house in the West Country has been carefully restored, and now rises elegantly from a simple, formal front garden with clipped hedges and traditional ironwork fences.
Michael Sinclair13/17Architectural designer Charles Rutherfoord’s elegant London home is a lesson in harnessing contrasts and the smart façade is softened with abundant planting.
Simon Brown14/17At the London home of garden designer Butter Wakefield, neatly clipped hedges line the pathway to the front door.
Rachael Smith15/17A picket fence and climbing roses gives the designer Louise Jones’ London home the feeling of a country cottage. Find out how to plant a similar cottage garden here.
Simon Brown16/17The red brick exterior of this home is modernised by large black-framed windows by Caroline Holdaway. A hedge adds a touch of green and creates privacy.
Jan Baldwin17/17No rural English garden is complete without a garden path. The stone walkway leading to Gipsy House, the home of the late Roald Dahl, was laid by the author himself. He was assisted in his efforts by a gentle giant of a local builder, Wally Saunders, who provided the inspiration for one of Dahl’s most popular novels, The BFG.
